Ninety in ninety. That’s what my friend—I’ll call him Gary—had just accomplished a week earlier. Ninety AA meetings in ninety days. We sat in a coffee shop last night and I heard his story. There are a thousand ways to be a drunk, but one outcome. You can’t stop drinking even though it’s killing you […]
Prayer/Meditation
A Teaspoon of Sand
Ted Ryan, a friend of mine, told me about an experience that goes under the category of “the things a child can imagine.” He was giving his four year-old son breakfast before he went off to work, but the boy was just sitting there. He wasn’t touching his cereal. So Ted says to his son, […]
The Old Well
“God is an underground river,” Meister Eckhart said, “that no one can dam up or stop.” I love that image of God because it completely flips the dominant image of God “up there.” When we first imagine a deity, God is always “up,” always distant, the Sky God of nearly every ancient religion. Until, gradually, […]
Too Busy Not to Pray
I sat in a group a few weeks ago—it was a group of clergy, and someone whose ministry I really respect began to speak of the challenges to his spiritual life. Don said, “Parish life can take it out of me. I get busy, then I get overwhelmed—and my spiritual life suffers. I ‘don’t have […]
Clocks and Clouds
“All problems are either clouds or clocks,” said the eminent philosopher Carl Popper. There are two different kinds of systems, he meant. To understand a clock you can take it apart, examine its individual pieces, understand it or fix it. A cloud is different. You can only observe it as a dynamic, shifting, morphing whole. […]
Tethering the Cat
Traditions and rituals that surround prayer and worship are essential. I can’t sit for prayer in the morning until I have made a cup of tea and a small plate of fruit. It’s part of my ritual. I do it most mornings before I am actually awake! But this is the glory of ritual—when I […]
When Words Fail
How do you communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language, nor you theirs? That, essentially, is the question Pam and I always face when we visit our French friends, Serge and Betty, whom we visited in Nice for five days last week. We do speak some French, Pam more than I; and they do […]
Communion on Chemo
Ashley Makar, who guest posts today, is a friend of my daughter, Sharon. Sharon sent me Ashley’s story–a 33 year-old woman with esophogeal cancer, and Pam and I read it together. Well, Pam tried to read it but could not make it through for the tears. It’s a beautiful testament to the power of love […]